(2 of 3)
An urgent sense of timeliness is not normally associated with the staff of the Monitor, which has had a reputation for keeping 8-to-4:30 bankers' hours—nor, for that matter, with the act of receiving the paper, which is distributed almost entirely by mail. The Monitor, moreover, is not a commercial venture that must answer to the marketplace but the official voice of the prosperous First Church of Christ, Scientist. The founder, Mary Baker Eddy, declared that Christian Science had a religious duty to publish the paper. All the senior editors are Christian Scientists (Fanning converted in 1965, in the wake of her divorce). So are most of the reporters. Representatives of the church's board watch over the paper, and staff members admit that church values are edited into the coverage. Chief among subjects the Monitor downplays: medicine, which the church rejects in favor of prayer.
Fanning's editorial reconception of the paper, aided by Design Consultant Robert Lockwood, who has also advised the Chicago Sun-Times, Dallas Morning News and Baltimore Sun, was carried out in tandem with an aggressive circulation and advertising plan developed by John Hoagland, the paper's chief business executive. One key decision was to drop the paper's regional sections and publish a single national edition.
The two executives were given a mandate for change by the church's board, which has grown discontented with mounting losses and, even more, the drop in U.S. circulation from 240,000 in the late 1960s to 150,000 last year (the Monitor also distributes a weekly edition to 16,000 subscribers). The paper's readers tend to be faithful, but they have been dying off without being replaced: 39% are 65 or older, while only 28% are under 45. Admits Hoagland: "We should not take a loyal readership for granted." The age of the Monitor's following is in turn a factor in discouraging advertisers, even though the readership is affluent (median household income: $32,000). Thus the paper now contains only about 25% advertising, compared with up to 60% in many other dailies, a level that Hoagland suggests the Monitor could some day reach. Says he:
"Circulation and advertising should keep pace with the quality of the editorial content."
The new regime is not altogether popular with the staff. Some Monitor reporters complain that the resources being spent on redesign and business promotion are diverted from more substantial news coverage. Fanning has also offended some veterans by diminishing the roles of elderly Monitor stars, including Godfrey Sperling Jr., 68, who was shifted from Washington bureau chief to columnist. More fundamental, some staff members fret that the paper's highbrow tone may be lowered. In the cultural section, for example, Fanning plans to give added space and emphasis to leisure and recreation.